Abuse at Conklin Dairy Farms, not an anomaly

I think by now everyone has seen or at least heard about the 4 minute undercover investigation video released by Mercy for Animals earlier this week. Workers at Conklin Dairy Farms in Ohio engaged in sadistic abuse of the animals they are paid to care for. Calves having their heads stomped on, diary cows tied

Eating Animals Many pieces appeared this past week about Eating Animals, the new book by Jonathan Safran Foer. There are some reviews and a few interviews. There was even a live Q and A with readers that appeared on the Washington Post website. The Huffington Post: My Q and A With Jonathan Safran Foer The

I went to the PNE last week, specifically the Agrifair bit. I can sort the problematic issues with the Agrifair into two fairly neat categories: the first involves some unsurprising animal abuse. The second was actually far more troubling. I’ll get to that in a bit. First, the abuse. Here is a photo of the

If you’ve ever driven through Abbotsford or any other rural farming community, you may have seen little white huts set up outside of dairy farms. These are veal huts. Occasionally they contain female calves, but most often they contain the males. Pretty much all of the male cavles born on dairy farms become veal. This

I often hear of sustainability referred to as an end goal, as if when we reach a level of sustainability, then everything is good. In this way many questionable activities, like the seal hunt, like fish farming, like intensive farming of animals, are excused as being sustainable. However, I think that sustainability is really the

Imagine being raised for meat, fattened up, and slaughtered. Now imagine being raised for your breastmilk, or your eggs. In the case of milk, you are artificially inseminated and impregnated. After a period of months—nine, in the case of both cows and humans—you give birth to a baby. Within hours—or days, if you’re lucky—your baby